Publications

History of Photography special issue: “The Photographic History Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.”
Guest editor, 24:1 (Spring 2000)

A special issue of the journal History of Photography featured the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History. Essays on several aspects of collection including daguerreotypes, W. H. F. Talbot, J. W. Draper, Pictorialism, color photography, and photomechanical processes.

This essay discusses the Smithsonian’s participation in a national exhibition, and describes the 1000 prints on view in the graphic arts section. It provides an appendix listing all artists and publishers included in the exhibition.

In a volume that presents a number of conference papers, this essay discusses the importance of prints to artists and collectors in Philadelphia in relation to the Sartain family of artists and art educators.

Two essays in Volume 4 of the Artefacts series, studies in the history of science and technology, a collaboration of the Deutsches Museum (Munich), the Science Museum (London), and the Smithsonian. One discusses the role of photomechanical processes in reproducing and distributing pictures in the 19th century. The other describes selected museums that collect and exhibit visual collections and their apparatus.

“Slavic and Eastern European-Related Graphic Collections in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History"
in Slavic & East European Information Resources, vol.11, nos. 2-3 (Apr.-Sept.2010), pp. 226-245.

A National Audience for Prints: The Smithsonian’s Exhibition Program, 1923-1948
pp. 26-59 in North American Prints, 1913-1947: an Examination at Century’s End. Ed. David Tatham (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006)

This essay describes the Smithsonian’s ambitious program of loan exhibitions that included many works by living artists. These exhibits introduced many new prints and printmakers to a broad national public between 1923 and 1948. Two appendices identify traveling group shows and the printmakers featured in solo exhibitions during this period.

Prints at the Smithsonian: the Origins of a National Collection.
(Washington: NMAH, 1996)

Catalog of an exhibition celebrating 150 years of print collecting by the Smithsonian Institution. Essay examines the history of public attitudes and cultural changes that affected artists, collectors, curators, and audiences.

The article uses the acquisition and exhibition of the Greensboro Woolworth lunch counter as a lens for examining, collecting, and interpreting the recent past. Explores the role of memory; meaning and representation; curatorial roles and obligations; politics; and race in doing public history at the Smithsonian Institution.

"Smithsonian Institute Preserves Jazz Heritage,"
International Musician: Official Journal of The American Federation of Musicians of The United States and Canada. New York: April 2004.

An essay on the history and importance of the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program and other components of the collections and work of the Smithsonian and the National Museum of American History to preserve and promote America's jazz legacy.